SPLITN2 CNC build log

For discussions related to designing and making ski/snowboard-building equipment, such as presses, core profilers, edge benders, etc.

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richie
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SPLITN2 CNC build log

Post by richie »

Hi guys, I thought I'd start a thread for my cnc project.

Hopefully it will be cutting cores and bases this 2015!!!!! Its been a long time coming and I am the worlds greatest procrastinator ditherer but lately I've got fired up and progress is being made.

Before you start on this sort of project you really need to look at why you're doing it. I am striving for repeatability, speed, accuracy, scalability , flexibility and so cnc makes sense for me to grow and develop my board designs and my business. But plenty of times I have looked at the idea of just plain outsourcing all cutting which has its merits too.

Cost of an in house cnc has to be factored in of course, my approach is to use my telecommunications electronics and IT background and build my own , partly for the fun and mainly the reality of cost meaning i must build my own to get a powerful cost effective system, and also by building my own cnc I understand the beast and the electronics and software behind it.

So a couple of years ago I started researching and at the same time accumulating the bits I decided I would need.

As much as possible I want to source the highest quality parts i can afford to get, and this dictates 2nd hand parts in some cases. So far I have scored some beauty 2.6m lengths of THK SSR30 rail and bearing blocks, some big THK ball screws 1.8m drive length, lots of THK SSR25 rail band bearings for y and z, and a lot of servo drive parts to build my controller with. Still a bit to go yet!

Lately I decided to finish my controller and driver electronics and now I have it almost done. X and Y Granite Devices VSD-XE servo drives and Motionking 940W AC brushless servos, fun to set up I am learning PID tuning now. Steppers would have been far easier but I like the idea of a closed loop positioning system. Its running Mach3 on a small PC and driving a USB smooth stepper and Homann Designs breakout board and a nice 1500w PSU for the HVDC supply. Initial servo tuning done but it will need a full tweak once its mounted on a machine. I still need another Granite Devices VSD for my Z axis too.

I'm running MonkeyCAM generated gcode through it on the bench with looping 100 times so it runs for 12+ hours continuously non stop as a burn in and de-bugging process. Today I ran the oscilloscope on the earthing and already found some stray signals so my earthing needs some improvement although its actually setup good - well I thought so until I saw the waveform between the frame ground and power supply ground......!!! shielding and earthing carefully is a must.

A few pics and a video of the controller here and motors spinning. More to come as I make progress.

The video when I first got motors spinning!!!!!
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=76 ... =2&theater

my controller box
Image

controller psu's and dc wiring etc
Image
Last edited by richie on Tue Feb 10, 2015 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MonkeyCAM and SnoCAD - https://github.com/mikemag
Ski binding mounting https://github.com/splitn2/DrillSki

Richard Harcourt | www.splitn2.com | Christchurch New Zealand
rich@splitn2.com | www.facebook.com/splitn2
twizzstyle
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Post by twizzstyle »

Congrats on the project! Having a big CNC router has been so much fun, you'll find you use it for a lot of stuff other than just ski-building (I've been doing a lot with VCarvePro the past year).

I love how you've got everything consolidated in that one box, that looks really nice.
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richie
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Post by richie »

twizzstyle wrote:Congrats on the project! Having a big CNC router has been so much fun, you'll find you use it for a lot of stuff other than just ski-building (I've been doing a lot with VCarvePro the past year).

I love how you've got everything consolidated in that one box, that looks really nice.
yes I am looking forward to all kinds of projects, hopefully it will cut ali nicely too! The controller is all squeezed into a 2nd hand box and it all just fitted nicely, kind of grew organically rather than super well planned but its all fitting. I am going to put Amphenol EcoMate connectors on the outside for the motor 3phase outputs, and using DB15 for the encoders which need good strain relief so I will need to be a bit careful with the DB15 but they fit the budget!!!! and I have another 7 pin EcoMate for eStop buttons and limits, so they are all robust enough and also can be unplugged easily from the machine.

I'm really caught in a conundrum now of do I "build it quick and get it running" or do I be patient and "build it once build it right". Both have their pros and cons. The main table I want stiff and strong and well damped, and I am tempted to do a big "epoxy granite" main table with strategically positioned steel that can be machined to take my bearing rails and ball screw mounts , this may sound overkill but in fact its probably easier than just one big steel bed that will deform and twist as its machined to take the rails..... a mate of mine is close to pouring his first epoxy granite mill bed so I'll see how he goes with it - I'm afraid of the big exotherm happening and having a pile of smoking hot sticky concrete stuff to deal with. Still the more I think about it the more I like that idea. Big, heavy, low expansion, well damped, stiff and straight. If I go this way it will be interesting and fun for sure!

So much to do so much to learn.......
MonkeyCAM and SnoCAD - https://github.com/mikemag
Ski binding mounting https://github.com/splitn2/DrillSki

Richard Harcourt | www.splitn2.com | Christchurch New Zealand
rich@splitn2.com | www.facebook.com/splitn2
skidesmond
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Post by skidesmond »

All that electronics is way over my head ;-) Very nice!

My 2 cents is to be patient although easier said than done. Looks like you've spent a lot of time (and money no doubt, because we all do) to get where you are right now.

How many times have we all said , "I wish I did this way instead"... Have no regrets.
pmg
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Post by pmg »

skidesmond wrote:How many times have we all said , "I wish I did this way instead"... Have no regrets.
And sing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFtGfyruroU :)

Very nice of you to do a CNC building journal, if I ever decide to do this as well it will be a useful resource.
knightsofnii
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Post by knightsofnii »

very cool. I ordered a customized 2' x 8' kit from cncrouterparts.com.
A long road of building, learning, building, learning, breaking, rebuilding, repeat.

But, couldn't be happier. Could have got a $20,000 shopbot and be in the same boat!!!
Doug
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richie
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Post by richie »

knightsofnii wrote:very cool. I ordered a customized 2' x 8' kit from cncrouterparts.com.
A long road of building, learning, building, learning, breaking, rebuilding, repeat.

But, couldn't be happier. Could have got a $20,000 shopbot and be in the same boat!!!
Yeah I agree, the thing I am most worried about is my servos and their massive torque and speed, so I will deliberately detune the speeds in the actual servo drive so matter how hard MACH3 tries to push them they can't go faster than I feel is safe for the machine and me!!!!! I think I have figured out how to do this in multiple ways, within the servo drive I can actually set max velocity and max acceleration and do self homing within servo, and also set the absolute lengths of each axis so in theory I can't drive it past its limits, and then in Mach3 I'll run soft limits as well as limit switches. All good in theory but I'm sure I'll find a way to crash it hard and break something.......
MonkeyCAM and SnoCAD - https://github.com/mikemag
Ski binding mounting https://github.com/splitn2/DrillSki

Richard Harcourt | www.splitn2.com | Christchurch New Zealand
rich@splitn2.com | www.facebook.com/splitn2
twizzstyle
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Post by twizzstyle »

When you setup your motor tuning in Mach3, you define the maximum speeds and accelerations. Even if you do a manual override of the speed defined in your gcode, it won't go faster than the speeds defined in the motor tuning.

I still haven't ever done soft limits or limit switches on my machine - I just make sure my projects are centered and zero'd correctly, and I have lots of margin. I also don't ever let it run without at least a little bit of supervision. The z and y axes have hard limits, it would just sit there skipping steps, but my x-axis (the long axis) has no hard stops - I don't want my gantry driving itself off the table, that would be bad!
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richie
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Post by richie »

twizzstyle wrote:When you setup your motor tuning in Mach3, you define the maximum speeds and accelerations. Even if you do a manual override of the speed defined in your gcode, it won't go faster than the speeds defined in the motor tuning.

I still haven't ever done soft limits or limit switches on my machine - I just make sure my projects are centered and zero'd correctly, and I have lots of margin. I also don't ever let it run without at least a little bit of supervision. The z and y axes have hard limits, it would just sit there skipping steps, but my x-axis (the long axis) has no hard stops - I don't want my gantry driving itself off the table, that would be bad!
yup I'll be relying on MACH3 accel and velocity limits as well as the servos too, so I have some levels of protection. I have a charge pump enabled from MACH3 working with my BOB so in theory any uncontrolled motion should not come from the PC end unless MACH3 has a spazz, but I am also wary of the servo drives themself having a spazz say with a bad wiring or a severe disruption to the encoders with inducted noise, having said that I am makign sure the wiring is all heavily shielded and correctly earthed and I am scoping for noise while I am bench testing and will repeat this when its all mounted in the cnc table frame.

MonkeyCAM does a nice job of reviewing its own gcode and establishing a bounding box that you can check and make sure it does not exceed your table limits so another protection but I'm not sure other CAM does this so yeah its good to be aware of your job and your table and stay within the boundaries eh!

Funny thing is I am learning this in theory but the school of hard knocks is gonna teach me a lot more I bet!!!!!!
MonkeyCAM and SnoCAD - https://github.com/mikemag
Ski binding mounting https://github.com/splitn2/DrillSki

Richard Harcourt | www.splitn2.com | Christchurch New Zealand
rich@splitn2.com | www.facebook.com/splitn2
sammer
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Post by sammer »

richie wrote:
Funny thing is I am learning this in theory but the school of hard knocks is gonna teach me a lot more I bet!!!!!!
Hope your tuition isn't too expensive!

sam
You don't even have a legit signature, nothing to reveal who you are and what you do...

Best of luck to you. (uneva)
amidnightproject
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Post by amidnightproject »

Watching this!

I want to upgrade from my mogul this summer and have been looking at builds recently. Looking forward to your build!
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richie
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progress

Post by richie »

Hi guys,

Well since my last posts on this, when I was as far as bench testing my MACH3 controller and servo system, I have now bitten the bullet and purchased a really well constructed DIY machine. So excited to try it!!! I'll actually graft my controller on to it and remove the current gear as my electronic build was better, but this steel bench rails screws gantry etc is a beautiful DIY job with best possible components too, so it should do some nice work for me.

Now the hard bit, get better with CAD and CAM, I will do mostly with SnoCAD-X and MonkeyCAM when it comes to board building to speed up my process further of course!!!

Fun times ahead.....


Image
MonkeyCAM and SnoCAD - https://github.com/mikemag
Ski binding mounting https://github.com/splitn2/DrillSki

Richard Harcourt | www.splitn2.com | Christchurch New Zealand
rich@splitn2.com | www.facebook.com/splitn2
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falls
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Post by falls »

Going to replace the Ryobi router Rich?
Looks like a solid machne. Congratulations
Don't wait up, I'm off to kill Summer....
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richie
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Post by richie »

falls wrote:Going to replace the Ryobi router Rich?
Looks like a solid machne. Congratulations
Yup got a nice ceramic bearing Italian spindle to mount up in due course. Cheers
MonkeyCAM and SnoCAD - https://github.com/mikemag
Ski binding mounting https://github.com/splitn2/DrillSki

Richard Harcourt | www.splitn2.com | Christchurch New Zealand
rich@splitn2.com | www.facebook.com/splitn2
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